Monday, January 29, 2007

Measuring Outcomes

With local elections in May, some readers might be interested in the "Conservative approach to improving public services" and David Cameron has just popped-up with a speech on the subject. The salient sentence is I think this one: "In place of targets that measure processes, a focus on objectives that measure outcomes."

Mind you, given week after week of bad news from the public sector surrounding both the Home Office and the Health Service the poor old voter might be forgiven for wondering if the mess we now find ourselves in can be resolved within the space of any one Government's term of office?

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Never mind one government's term of office I do not believe anything will be resolved in my lifetime, in fact I can't see any hope at all.That's why I am leaving for somewhere with a better quality of life, where there may be political problems but I won't understand them or be able to vote so I won't have to make any decisons.................I know its a copout but whatever............I know I wont be voting labour again, Gordon Brown has doubled the tax on my even leaving the darn country.So the more of us leave the more he collects in departure taxes..........

The problem with such a quote is that the average person in the street does not understand what it means.

I fear the Tories and David in particular have missed what is really annoying the public that you would expect to be 'conservative'. We have seen sleaze and we still have an investigation over peerages; the MAFF utterly mishandle foot&mouth under the other Brown; the NHS soak up £billions and is still closing wards and laying off nurses; a relentless rise in so called minor crime; ineffective policing, jailing, immigration control, security, passport services and you can't even get NHS dental treatment. Ignoring the lies and deceit over Iraq, I cannot remember a litany of such POOR GOVERNMENT in the past 40 years.

Who has Gordon targeted to provide the largesse handed out as political bribes to traditional labour areas? All our citizens on average or below average incomes who thought it would be a good idea to be independent of the State, by buying their own housing and saving through pensions for their old age have been hit the hardest. I am amazed that a Labour Govt has overseen and been responsible for the Pensions scandal that has inflicted misery on so many ordinary working men and women. No opposition in living memory has been given such a great hand to attack a sitting ineffective Government. David and the Tories need to OPPOSE and start championing those aged 50+ who appear to be the worst hit; they are after all the majority of potential voters and are fed up to the back teeth with PC and the lame excuses that dribble from Labour ministers' lips about 'reviews', 're-organisation' etc. Labour has been in charge for 10 years for goodness sake and it is time for it to be sent packing ASAP!

I would welcome a different approach from the relentless and dogmatic reliance on targets, Performance Indicators and league tables which drives the public sector in ways which make it look good rather than improve things for us.

Take 2 examples. Try booking a Doctor's appointment a few days in advance. You can't ? That'll be down to the targets they have to hit.

Racial incidents reported to the council ? you would have thought the fewer the number the better for all of us - a signal that we are living in a more tolerant society perhaps. Oh no, Councils are set targets to increase these each year. The result ? Council staff and community safety officers manipulating reported incidents to exaggerate any racial aspect of it so to "improve" their performance year-on-year.

The most important case, by which we could re-establish the basis of our rule of law, is the case of the journalist who joined police to do research on "Institutionalized Racism".

There has been a little bit of mealymouthing about the fact he took an oath as a constable and breached its terms.

The sooner he is acquaintedwith the charge that he lied to undermine the Queen as SOLE fount of all justice the better. Life imprisonment should give him time to think on.

Then EVERY civil servant in uniform misguided pseudocopper in this land might finally realise that theu derive their authority from the Crown and discharge duty to the Crown's judiciary.

Home Office "Key competencies for police officers" (such as respect for diversity and diversity training and seeing things from the others point of view and persuading others to do the same ..) are all breaches of the terms of the Oath of the Constable to the Queen "Without fear or favour, malice or ill will" (IE all equal before the law .... no different perspective for blacks, gays, asians, whites)

Maggie Thatcher committed treason on an absolutely massive scale when govt took centralized control over police in the Miners strike. Tellingly not one copper stood against it because he is sworn to the Queen and individually criminally responsible to the Queen for the conduct of his duty.

No one made Maggie Queen and no one made her Fount of All Justice in Mercy by Coronation Oath.

More than thirty years ago Sir Robert Mark said that we no longer recruit the most able as police officers but the most malleable to make of them what we will.

Winston Churchill warned us against allowing that development.

We should have listened. The place to start tackling crime and social cohesion issues is the Constitutional Monarchy in particular bring the police back into a lawful body so that they stop many years of breaching a principle that you don't break the law to enforce the law.

Do you think youth respects the police ? Do they bollocks. Do you think the police merit respect. Do they bollocks.